09 March 2009

What our university should do, and why, but won't

I walk past these three vending machines every day as I go to my office. In my building, there are at least 17 vending machines, of which at least 11 sell beverages. I think our university should get rid of them.

We don’t need bottled water, as there's drinking water on campus. This week’s Science Podcast discussed a study to estimate the energy cost of bottle water compared to drinking tap water, and bottled water doesn’t come out well:

(I)t turns out that for every bottle of water you drink it might as well be a quarter full of oil, for the amount of oil that’s being consumed in order to produce all of this bottled water. ...

(W)e’re talking about 50 million barrels of oil a year. And, just for point of comparison, that’s the same amount of oil used in the entire U.S. over two days – all the cars we drive, all the factories, all the lights we turn on – everything – so it’s a really big chunk of the oil that’s consumed. ...